Pretend you're a cooking blog day!

Yesterday, here, we got to talking about coffee at work. When I say we, I mean me, but you did all the hard work of having to care about what someone else had to say- always more challenging than people like to let on. I got to the coffee drink I invented and drink throughout the hotter parts of the summer and realized it was a sufficiently different discussion to warrant a new blog post. I'm delighted to have your attention, but, as per the merciless instant gratification protocols of the internet, don't like to keep you too long. Plus it's always just a teensy relief knowing my next blog subject, not that I don't mind winging it occasionally. I'm very brave.

I'd like to call this drink "The Calypso" but can't think of any reasonable justification for that and really just call it a coffee spritzer. I drank one today, and yesterday, and the day before. It is July. Simply enough the drink is cold press coffee, maple syrup, sparkling water, and whole milk. The sparkling water magically brings out the hidden flavors of the coffee, the maple syrup deepens and enriches them, and the milk smooths and weaves it all together.

I am more a cook-as-you-go kind of cook, and I have never formally written a recipe, even for a drink, but for fun, and since today is Pretend You're a Cooking Blog Day, I present:

The Calypso Coffee Spritzer

Ingredients:

Organic Cold Press Coffee

Maple Syrup

Sparkling Water

Organic Whole Milk

Ice Cubes or Coffee Ice Cubes (both optional)

For the cold press:

Take coarsely ground coffee (as freshly ground as possible), I like Bolivian coffees. Ha! Who am I kidding. I get whatever organic coffee is on sale- Peace Coffee, Equal Exchange, whatever roaster/importer you've got where you live. Mix one part coffee and four parts water. Let sit out (or in refrigerator) for 10 to 24 hours. I make mine in a french press. Strain, chill cold press. If you want to go the fancy route pour some cold press in an ice cube tray for coffee ice cubes.

Assembling the drink:

In a glass put two ice cubes, no ice cubes, or two coffee ice cubes.

Pour in two scant finger-fulls of  maple syrup (more towards three fingers if you like rather sweet, one finger or a bit less for something low key, or because maple syrup is magnificently expensive).

Add cold press to fill glass 2/3 full.

Stir

Add, in equal proportions, to fill:

Sparkling water (I love Apollonaris, but anything is fine in this).

And, finishing with, Organic Whole Milk (you can't use non-organic milk as it will cause a chemical chain reaction, exploding the beverage, causing shards of glass to embed into the kitchen walls, narrowly missing your nose. If you are crazy, young, a daredevil, an athlete, celebrating, or hosting a garden party you can use organic half and half or even cream).

Always add the milk last, and it will fall prettily through the drinks. Don't stir.

Cheers.

Coffee

I really love coffee and it's a big part of any day for me, certainly including work days (which are most days!). My library houses a barely acceptable regional chain cafe, but my standards and sense of economy have risen to the point where I basically never use it. I have my own small espresso machine in the break room. It is the cheapest available machine to meet my minimum standards. In moderate or cool weather I make cappuccinos or lattes on it. I will make drinks for co-workers, but it tends to be more in a special occasion situation than as a regular occurrence. I enjoy the elaborate, but not overwhelming, process of making a lovely creamy drink for myself. I love the little five minute break. I enjoy looking forward to it. I love the even-if-it's-just-a-minute calmness of making it and taking the first sips of its perfectness, that little bit where it draws me back to myself, a hard thing for me to get to in the work place. On the drug side of things I really appreciated the unevenness that caffeine can bring to my day. Really. That steady baseline has always tended to drive me down, and knowing that I might have one or two periods in my day where I can blaze through all kinds of superhero nonsense, be productive, wild, manic, flourishing, makes the parts of the day where I stare foggily at all the books everywhere and take 15 seconds to determine whether to say "Good afternoon." or "Good evening" when I answer the phone, strangely enjoyable.

Oh, and how good coffee smells!

I am idiosyncratically snobby about coffee, which is to say real espresso aficionados would rightly laugh at my absurd abuses of the stuff. I do know the best cafes in town and in Rome, so there, and I only buy and drink organic coffee from reputable roasters. I buy ridiculously good organic milk stolen out of the bodies of pasture fed cows. On the other hand I have no grinder, will sometimes use astonishingly old and dead coffee, and I make shots with a supreme lack of properness on a very cheap machine.

In the heart of summer I thrive on an entirely different sort of coffee drink of my own invention. Tomorrow I'll play like a cooking blog and tell you about it then.

Let us, together, end the internet

In the totally wonderful Daniel Pinkwater book The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death our teen narrator visits the family home of Rat (a teenaged girl) for breakfast. Her family is very eccentric, although, come to think of it, every single person in the entire book is eccentric, which I think is part of the enormous beauty of Daniel Pinkwater's writing and understanding of the world. Anyway, at the breakfast table, Rat's Aunt lectures passionately on the evils of opera. It turns out this is not a random speech, and that this Aunt has devoted herself to inveighing against opera, is fiercely against listening to opera, and is committed to explaining how opera can ruin your life. This mission of hers is matched in fervor only by her apparent love of opera. Any time not spent warning against the evils of opera she spends in her room, with her massive collection of opera albums, listening to opera.

There's just something about this...

Here's the world famous blogger writing away once again on the internet. What will he write about today? Every day must be something new, no resting on laurels here! He pauses mid sentence to wander the sprawling internet, home of his blog, for sustenance and inspiration. His hopes flicker. Why can't he find things he likes? 300 billion pages but he feels sad and lonely, uninspired and unentertained. Here is a link. It is a link to a link to a link to a link. It is very popular. The world famous blogger is jealous. The linkers to the links that have good links are more world famous than the world famous blogger. First it was called the "web", and "the net". Then it became the superhighway, the internet superhighway, and now, now it is the internet racetrack, a race, round and round and round. The world famous blogger parks his old battered internet car. "No," he says "This isn't working out."  He heads off into the weeds, on foot. "I'm afraid the internet itself just hasn't worked out." He says sadly "And I'll be here daily, so come on by."

Coincidence

When one works around media and representations of media one runs into an amazing amount of coincidences. For fun you can pretend you are constantly running into psychic phenomenon. "Oh my god," I might say "I was just having a pointless discussion in which I insisted, for some complicated, mostly random reason, that Catcher In the Rye has sold more copies than all of Kurt Vonnegut's books put together. Then I walked to the front desk and the first patron I saw handed me a copy of Catcher In the Rye! Pick a number between one and a thousand, buy me a lottery ticket, I am white hot!" But psychic fun times aside, what these coincidences really tell us is:

1. Famous media, artists, stars and etc. of a culture seem terribly exhaustive, but are actually a smaller set than we might think and can be almost entirely represented in one suburban library.

2. We talk about this famous stuff constantly. I mean constantly. We order and structure our social and mythic universe with this stuff and we communicate regularly with it almost as language in itself.

3. If you keep mixing these matching sets (items 1 and 2 here) of even thousands and thousands of things a couple of them are going to come near enough together that they'll stand dramatically out. "What are the odds?" You will ask in amazement. They are about even.

I have been listening to a live version of this completely extraordinary Van Morrison song, Listen to the Lion (this all is a link if you care to hear). My co-worker came over to put a cart in order and in my enthusiasm I insisted he listen to it. He always does this sort of thing willingly for me for about five seconds, and then he talks. I can't fault him for this, I mean, what's he going to do, stand there stupefied for almost nine minutes? I'd do the same probably. Besides, his talking gave me the opportunity to launch into some long, made up history lesson about how (get ready) sometimes there's a truly great artist and it looks like they will be the major future of a medium, but they turn out to be a far more idiosyncratic and individual mastery. Astral Weeks and this era of Van Morrison was an example of this, where it seemed like some fusion of jazz into rock was destiny. I cited how Rolling Stone used to rank this album like, number two or three all time (it is now 19, superseded mostly by old albums, the only newer ones to knock it back are Born to Run and Nevermind). To further illustrate my point I then cited how Ursula K Le Guin seemed, actually around the same time, to be the future of Science Fiction/ Fantasy, once upon a time. It merely turned out she was (is) as great as it gets, but not really a movement or direction so much. He was actually pretty polite about my slightly over enthusiastic professor mode, despite it going on for a bit longer than it did here.

I went home and my wife and I decided to watch the movie The Five Year Engagement. I will deprive you of my review, but I will say the soundtrack is made up almost entirely of Van Morrison songs and covers of Van Morrison songs. It was eerie. You can call it mere coincidence if you want, but I say something was up. As I was reeling from this there came a knock on the door. I opened the door and a thoughtful looking old woman stood there. 

"Yes?" I asked.

"I am Ursula K. Le Guin." She said "And I have come to appear in your blog post."

Coincidences are coincidences, but how did she know about the blog post?


Special bonus part:

You can have an exciting coincidence too! You have just encountered one simple five minute blog post among who knows what else you've read or seen recently and now, to achieve magical coincidence, you need only accidentally run into one of these before time runs out; Catcher in the Rye, Kurt Vonnegut or any of his books, Van Morrison, Rolling Stone Magazine's top albums, Bruce Springsteen or Born to Run, Nevermind or Nirvana or Kurt Cobain, the move The Five Year Engagement, or Ursula K. Le guin. Good luck on meeting the magical world of the psychic.

Solutions

Today someone brought into the break room several small paper plates with some slightly smashed looking fruit bar cookies. At least I think they're cookies. They did not come with any labeling. But the thing about these "cookies" that has blown the mind of everyone here who's seen them is that, of the three square break room tables, they are on the wrong one! The first table on the right, when you come in the door, is, by long consent, the free food table. These mysterious plates are on a left, back table by the windows. The entire staff is befuddled. What is this food? Is it just here on its way somewhere else? Is it for sale? What do we do with it? No one has touched these for hours. I saw two librarians exclaim confusedly about the plates as they sat down to lunch among them. They didn't disturb them at all. I think they decided to pretend they don't exist, like everyone else. I've been sharing in all the confusion, just so you don't think I'm being all superior, but, while writing this, and, frankly considering this to be an issue that could never be resolved, I had a little brainstorm. It seems so simple now that I've though of it. I am going to the break room and moving the plates of cookies to the free food table.

They should be completely eaten within an hour.

New and improved FAQ!

What is the Internet?

The four thousandth totally brilliant invention in a row to utterly fail its promise.

What is Clerkmanifesto?

Quiet resistance carefully hidden out in the open . An attempt to possess the flight of birds. A humble tinkering with the machinery of god to get it working worse. Your friend. A blog.

What is a "blog"?

No one knows yet, but it doesn't sound very appealing.

Are all FAQs this cryptic?

As Kabir says: When you really look for me, you will see me instantly- you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Don't you already have a FAQ?

Yes, this it the new, improved one, except, well, it's not necessarily "improved" so much as it is a result of my recent discovery that I love writing FAQs for my blog.

So should we expect more FAQs?

I am tempted to get started on the next one immediately.

Notes from the front lines

Keeping up with a blog like this can be a very intense process. I make sure never to be without a pen that I like, and my pants pockets are usually stuffed with notes, ideas, pieces of written posts, and full posts waiting to be typed up. Sometimes I'll empty out my pockets to find nearly completed pieces I barely remember working on. Often these appear to have veered into disastrous territory and were abandoned abruptly. The following is a recent find of this kind.

Feeling a tad on the blue side of things I arrived at work to find I would be spending two hours almost right away on the front desk with the clerk who is The Worst of Us (known hereafter as Twou). Sure I could have given up right then and there, but what did JRR Tolkien do when he had to make an unpleasant jewelry delivery on an awful hot day in Oxford? He turned it into a fantasy epic! What did Martha Graham do when she was trapped by buffeting winds in a phone booth? She created modern dance! So I decided to take my own personal challenge and live blog about it. Sure, it may not change the face of modern blogging, but this is raw clerking, lived right at the desk, with real people, breathing, shelving, and checking out books. So still, you gotta figure it's gonna be pretty darn thrilling.

1:00:  Twou lingers in the staff area doorway reading the schedule for several minutes until I've handled the full transition of clerks at the front desk. She emerges at 1:04 when her spot has been vacated and there is no one for her to help.

1:11:  Twou tries to steal my favorite little old man patron from me even though there is a more obvious patron for her to help and the little old man is geared up to come to me. He sings Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen to me in a rich baritone. He may be kind of psychic!

1:16: Twou sends someone across the library to the reference desk instead of answering a question that would take seven seconds.

1:19: While I am helping two women at my computer Twou calls the one with a crewcut "Sir" while pointlessly asking her if she needs help while they're leaving.

1:24: Twou disappears into the deepest corner of the request shelving to apparently spend the rest of the afternoon elaborately shelving eleven books. This leaves me alone on the desk to deal with a medium busy afternoon. This would be preferable, normally, but I fear may decrease my live blogging material.

1:45: Twou comes back to check on the the desk only when there is no one to help. Actually, I think she is coming back for sips of water from her thermos.

2:02: Twou has switched her shelving method to the mysterious "hopscotch" technique used by some of the peculiar staff in our non-fiction shelving team. This is a method that appears to be 90 percent traveling, 10 percent shelving.

2:11: Patron comes up to Twou with a softball of a question. I watched with baited breath, but Twou answered it correctly. Wishing my co-worker will misinform a patron forces me to have to begin facing the darkness of my endeavor.

2:32: A busier time, or her tiring of shelving, places Twou and I both at the desk together for awhile. My statistics from this time period show me as helping 14 people to her 3. The darkness of my watching her begins to pollute my soul and make me paranoid. I think she might be looking at me disapprovingly. I feel she is judging me. I start to wonder if she is blogging about me.

My notes end here.

I am famous

Here's the world famous blogger setting down to write another world famous blog post.

Oh, excuse me, I have to pose for a picture for some fans. My cheek muscles get so sore from all that smiling! The autographs are easier and by now I've perfected my flourishing and dramatic half-second signature. But either pictures or autographs I don't really mind. I feel quite honored and humbled by it all.

Okay, okay, okay. I'm not famous like that. But after many years, often prominently at the front desk of an extremely busy, almost urban public library, I am just a little, teensy bit famous. Rare is any extended urban excursion for me that does not involve someone staring at me quizzically. Isn't this how it happens to real famous people who are laying low in public?

"I know you from somewhere, but I just can't place it." It's a question posing as a musing. I don't know about George Clooney, but it causes me to go all humble, almost involuntarily guarded yet gracious, magnanimous and patient.

"The Library." I say simply, much as George Clooney might say quietly, almost rueful about his wonderfulness "Ocean's Eleven." The Library, Ocean's Eleven, no more than that is needed for famous people like us.

"Oh! Right. I knew it. You've been there for years, haven't you?"

It doesn't matter what they say, it's all as if they're complimenting me vociferously. "Yes, many years now, thank you." I am humbled by my fans and their adulation, but I'd better smoothly wind it up. They'd probably talk to me forever if they could, and we don't want to draw a crowd, you know. My wife and I want to get to the cafe before it closes.

"So nice to see you." I say in farewell. I don't recognize these people at all, but it's a big day for them, seeing one of their ten favorite library clerks at large in the city. I'm off duty, but a library clerk is never entirely off duty.

"See you at the library." I say.

"See you at the library." They say.

How to tell if you like your co-worker

They may walk in the door and you are all full of greetings and news and chatter, and you may think you like them, but it is not necessarily so. And some other co-worker may work the whole day with you and yet you may not exchange more than five quiet sentences. It doesn't mean you aren't very fond of them, but there's a lot going on in the workplace and feelings can be easily misplaced in the tumult. Fortunately I have found one very reliable barometer for how I feel about my co-workers. My reaction to their vacations, substitutions and illnesses are perfect measures of my true feelings for them. Am I crushed that someone is taking off a week to go spend some time in Madison? Am I filled with selfish bitterness when they ruin my day by staying home with a migraine? If my answer is an emphatic yes, and they aren't one of my dearest workplace comrades, then they are at least quietly part of the bedrock that makes me happy at work. Either way they are part of the web that makes my job a place I belong, part of why I might think "Well, at least it's Tuesday" even if I barely offer myself an explanation for that thought. Conversely, if I hear someone has the day off and I feel a quiet, professional satisfaction, maybe like I've just bowled a strike, I am definitely being keyed into my low feelings regarding that person. Maybe it's not even that strong. Maybe they're going on vacation and I feel lighter, relieved. I find, unbidden, I am breathing more deeply. Many of these feelings I know I will feel ahead of time, but there are surprises sometimes too. They tend to be with the less extreme feelings. I hear someone I am friendly with will be out for a bit and I feel nothing. Someone fills in for the night and I'm suddenly delighted to see them walk in. I didn't even know I liked them. It's good to know.

Live on blog poetry interpretation!

 To do my live blog poetry interpretation I first looked around for difficult poets and poems, but then, as I wrote yesterday, I happened on song lyrics that seemed harder than any poem I could find. So I decided I might as well just grab any old famous poet poem I could find and see what happens. I read a poem I liked by Yeats once, and, looking around, this Swan poem showed up and I thought that was good enough for me. I like swans. I haven't read it yet. I'll give you the whole thing to read, and I'll read it too. Then I'll interpret it, on the fly, with a weak understanding of poetry, and Yeats, and actually lots of things that I'll feel free to bring into play here because I feel it will be good for poetry as a whole to be brought into the hurly-burly of the waking world and particularly of almost but not quite unhinged library blogs. To my blog readers who are poets: you may want to read this one with your eyes shut. But I do it for poetry! You can also skip down and read the poetry with my commentary right off. I'm just being polite here.

The Wild Swans at Coole

By William Butler Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,   

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water   

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones   

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me   

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings   

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,   

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;   

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,   

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,   

Mysterious, beautiful;   

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day   

To find they have flown away? 



Okay, now with my commentary: 

The Wild Swans at Coole

 -as I said, I was won over some by the title, at least the wild swans part. How confusing can wild swans be? Don't know where Coole is though assume it's a place, with swans.

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
-good, good, autumn trees, we get that here, super pretty. Of course it's early summer now, but I'll use my imagination!  

The woodland paths are dry,
-yes, paths, country, or wild, no sidewalks, pleasant weather...

Under the October twilight the water   

Mirrors a still sky;
 -evening very clear and still, a lake too! I am totally understanding the poem so far. Can we stop now while the going's good? No? You okay?

Upon the brimming water among the stones   

Are nine-and-fifty swans.
 -Oh! That's a lot of swans. It's not just a pretty scene on a lovely evening. It's an awesome spectacle of nature!

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me   

Since I first made my count;
-So he's been counting these swans every fall for nineteen years. I think that's right. Either way he definitely likes counting, that's for sure.

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings   

Upon their clamorous wings.
-I think he roughly counted 59 swans and was sort of double checking, you know, firming up the count, when they all started flying and whirling about dramatically and noisily.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   

And now my heart is sore.
-something about the beautiful birds or his history or both is making him sad.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,   

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   

Trod with a lighter tread.
-okay, I've lost some of my confidence on this, but I think these 19 years have made this visit with the brilliant creatures heavier in his soul, beautiful but sad. Is it the years? I understand about the years- that bell-beat of their wings echoes the talk of time.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;   

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,   

Attend upon them still.
-The swans are intimate with the world and with each other. They remain young. I don't think our poet is jealous exactly of the swans, but they lay bare the complications of his heart and the years. Oh, who am I kidding, he is so jealous and so painfully far away feeling.

But now they drift on the still water,
-drifting on still water we're back to the start and can finish counting, but it's too beautiful and now way too sad for that. It just makes us thoughtful, horribly thoughtful.  

Mysterious, beautiful;   

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day   

To find they have flown away?

-almost like a twist at the end? It seems like when he talks of the swans flying away it's like all his passion and conquest and young heartedness is flying away forever. Like, this all is sad enough watching, he's saying, but god, imagine when all the swans just go! I even had the off thought the the 59 swans were somehow the poet's 59 years. My stumbling feeling is that it's an elegy for years passing by and feeling the incomparable world slowly leaving you. There might even be the starting of acceptance at the end. Maybe it charts a passage in some middle age? Man, pretty poem though, that lake, with the swans! In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, where people actually enter fiction he talks about it being dangerous to enter poetry because it's so intense, too intense inside, every feeling is heightened. To me maybe it's just that intensity like Jasper Fforde says, or there'd be nothing at all inside a poem, depending on who your were, and what you'd be willing to bring. It's like you have to bring more of yourself to a poem than with other writing. Or maybe that's just me...

Live poetry interpretation delayed!

 So, in preparation for my live, on blog, poetry interpretation (to be done in penance for our massacred library poetry section) I went out onto the internet to look for a super complicated, hard to understand poem. I knew the poem should be on the shorter side as I would hate to overtax the internet with too many words. The internet is so delicate in that way bully monsters can be. I moused around for a bit and William Blake came up a couple of times as sort of a challenging to understand poet. So I went out and found this poem: 

Ah Sunflower

Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

William Blake

Now, I am not going to say this leaps off the page to me as intensely intelligible, but I didn't have a ton of trouble with the first two lines. Then, in a curious turn of events, I had cause to look up the lyrics to a song by my current favorite singer. This is a song I love, and I was looking it up to clarify the line I couldn't stop singing so I could perhaps sing it correctly. The singer is The Tallest Man on Earth (no, not actually, just, funny name). The song is called Bright Lanterns and the lyrics are as follows (and you can listen to it here):

 Bright Lanterns
by The Tallest Man on Earth

 Well we air clear blue aching skies in the morning after
And memories of gold on the run, flying around
Was there a drunken cloud over someone just empty
A vision of a mount you say, so where did it go

It was light and I held it like a child to be saved
From the fires and from the falling down satellites
But still wondering

Damn you always treat me like a stranger, mountain
Though you've seen the shadow between the city and what is mine
And fallen kids all rising men among their logs, but leavers
Suddenly darker in their eyes and their broken smiles
It's only what these kids will haul around

Well there's a lot of sullen land for hungry feed of answers
And medicine for balancing things, like seeing your ghosts
So thank god we're bright, said the lanterns brother
Cause I don't know a thing about boats or the land I see

It was day and I stood there once again climbing quick
When I knew you were the one throwing dying stars on our gathering
But he said

Damn you always treat me like a mountain, stranger
Though I have never seen your shadows or fading lights
I'm just a rock that you'll be picking up through all your ages
Always believing there's a canyon for every blind
It's only what these kids will haul around

So, hi, it's me again. Did you read these? I probably wouldn't have, but as we fascinatingly established in an earlier blog post, you are not me. So who knows, maybe you did!  Now, what I have to say about these song lyrics, to a song I love, is... Oh my god! This looks not just seriously difficult, but actually approaching something like random strings of words. I'd be all aquiver if I was going to have to live blog interpret these lyrics, much more than the William Blake, and yet I already know I love these somehow. I just furtively read an article by Michael Chabon, a brand new article I think since I was standing at the to be processed magazine cart, about song lyrics and poetry. It was all a little skimmy and in a hurry for me (my reading, not the writing), but one thing I really liked is how he made a nice argument that lyrics aren't exactly poetry, but they are writing.

This brings me to a place I so frequently arrive at, the one where I suddenly have absolutely no idea what my point is, and I have to sort of read back through and invent one, or sometimes remember my original planned point and need now to figure a way to hammer the thing into what I've written. I don't usually mention this part of the process, in case you were wondering. And my point is, it's all words. It all does whatever it does. And tomorrow, when I live blog interpret some poem (and I'll pick a new one), it won't matter if I'm right or wrong or disrespectful or dazzled. It's just a poem, and, like all writing, even this, seeking after that sweet golden clime.

Poetry from the weeds

The librarians have been at the weeding again recently. We only have so much room for books and the new ones keep pouring in. And do you know how many books you can get at through one of those computers that are sitting where we might have had bookshelves once upon a time? A whole lot more than we ever have had or ever will have in our library, that's for sure! Not that I've ever seen anyone reading anything even resembling a book on one of those things. This makes me just a little sad at first, but when I understand that you can play clever little mind numbing games or watch bunnies eat dandelions on computers it makes sense no one is reading poetry on those screens.

Coincidentally what was it all those librarians were weeding? Poetry books! They were cutting through the poetry section like boll weevils through a field of cotton! Do they hate poetry? Actually, I don't know, but they sure don't love it enough to save a lot of it. Their little computer program tells them that some Pablo Neruda book has to go since no one's bothered to check it out since one of the Bush presidencies and off it goes to the book sales. No one sheds a tear.  Indeed, it's just me, getting kind of cross and sulky for a bit. But who am I to get all righteous? How much poetry do I read? I run into a Mary Oliver book while shelving in the stacks and I read maybe one poem all the way through. I don't even think of checking the whole book out. In fact, I think that's how I read every book of poetry; one poem and out, great, good, bad, one poem. Poetry is difficult, it requires attention. Half the time with a poem and with a poem's complicated, dense journey I don't know whether I'm supposed to catch it or eat it, fly it, pet it, run with it or just watch it.

Well, tomorrow is penance. I am reading a poem live, on blog. Some awful, wicked hard poem too. Right here, commenting and wildly misunderstanding it as I go, all to pay for all those killed poetry books, to pay for all the ink in my hands, all the books struck down dead while I whiled away my time reading Gerald and Piggie books.

Not that the Gerald and Piggie books aren't awesome, they are, but still, tomorrow...

Cultivating those useful relationships

When you have a lot of co-workers being friendly with them all is not necessarily the best course of action. It can be nice to be on amiable terms with everyone, which is not the same as friendly, but the best I am usually hoping for is to not be on overtly hostile terms with anyone. Mostly I manage this, sometimes I don't. Friendliness, the people I might chat with briefly, is in a slightly smaller subsection of that generalized amiability, and those relationships need to be considered on an individual basis as they're developed. How much do I want to encourage a relationship with someone who almost exclusively complains to me about mundane, boring and bitter things from their personal life? Do I want someone who is relentlessly inept to feel free at all times to approach me for help? How much distance do I keep from someone who can be ever so slyly and secretly mean, but is mostly friendly? What about, for instance, a very quiet, not very good at their job sort of person? Will they be happier if I don't talk to them? Would they like a little inclusion? A little help? I don't know the answer to any of these things. I try and feel my way through. How co-workers affect me can make a difference too. A clerk who is really terrible at their job, and we currently are carrying several of these, can have a truly negative impact on my day and my work reality. That may not be personal to me what they're doing, but it is bound to affect my natural sense of warmth towards them. Why wouldn't it? But sometimes different kinds of responses are appropriate towards them depending on their character and just how bad they are. Sometimes being chatty and friendly with one gives me a free space to insist they do better, at least around me. They may only do slightly better, but it allows for my own self expression, at least in the face of their annoyingness, without risking some kind of pointless fight. For others there's nothing for it but one "Hello" every three days and perhaps an occasional vague smile.

As the circle of job difference widens I can be a little less affected by problem workers and their problem personalities. There is a librarian who I wouldn't wish on any patron in the world, er, no, wait, I mean, who I would only wish on a very tiny selection of very unpleasant patrons, but who works in a sphere usually far enough removed from me that I could comfortably say a couple friendly things to her the other day. And I was rewarded for it! That afternoon, walking past the reference desk to shelve, she twice shared internet tidbits with me.  I was invited to a picture of a tree fallen on a car (interestingly, coincidentally, that night I would see that same sort of event played out all over my neighborhood!) and I also learned there, at her computer, that Kanye West's child would be called "North." Neither of these were immensely interesting, but it's nice to be included.

Making this blog even better!

At my last library in-service day I learned about U-X, user experience, as a model for library improvement. A couple of times since then I have written on issues related to this "U-X," but then, if you have memorized all 147 of my blog posts, you will know that.

"Oh" You ask "Were we supposed to memorize the blog posts?"

I laugh warmly. No, no, no. I mean, not word for word.

Now that that's all squared away I will touch up your memory ever so slightly by saying that the basic idea with user experience is to look at your services and environment from the perspective of the user, a sort of what-if-I-were-visiting-the-library-for-the-first-time thing. Anyway, I was thinking "Hey, what if I applied a little U-X to my blog?" That's how we ended up here. What do I like to see on a website, and how am I doing on my blog with me as a hypothetical user? Also, how can I improve?

1. I do not like to be faced with long blocks of text. I'd rather be eased into all that reading with pictures, headlines, sub-headlines, cartoons, optical illusions, flattery, and stoked outrage.

How am I doing?:

Really really really badly.

Plans to fix it:

Um, train the user to appreciate large blocks of text?

2. I love numbered lists. It makes everything so pleasantly buffet-like and easily digestible.

How am I doing?:

     1. Awesome
     2. Way high on the curve!
     3. Brilliant.

Plans to fix it:

None required!

3. I like when a post has interesting reader comments so that I can kind of linger in the world of the quality blog post I just read. I like the comments to be either
     1. What I would say, so I don't have to say it, or,
     2. More clever than what I can think of to say, or,
     3. All nice and warm and friendly, but if someone is mean I like lots of comments from different people ganging up to crush the mean commenter.

How am I doing?:

I have come to feel that, except for rare circumstances and to answer direct questions, the comment section is not really for me. It is for my blog readers. So then, this is more of a how are you doing? Perhaps you will want to do a U-X survey of your role as blog reader.

Plans to fix it:

Not applicable.

4. I dislike being given any responsibilities as a blog reader. I don't want to be called to action or asked to donate to anything. I especially don't want to be told to do a U-X of my role as blog reader! I don't want to login or click on anything, and I want to read safely tucked away in my remote and cozy anonymity.

How am I doing?:

Well, clearly "3" was a low point and touched a bit of a nerve with me as a pretend reader of my blog. Hypothetical me is not doing a U-X of my (his?) role as a blog reader! On the plus side I make people click very little, login not at all, and consider contributing to absolutely nothing. I, as a reader, would like this. The occasional implications that it would be nice if I commented or that I should read certain books would be minor annoyances.

Plans to fix it:

I guess I could stop suggesting you do a user experience study of your role as blog reader. We'll start with that.

I guess that's all for today because I don't want to have too much text here! But I will say this in conclusion about my blog U-X study:

1. I learned a lot!
2. Only together can we make this blog perfect!
3. We probably shouldn't make this blog perfect.

The pre-opening time

I very rarely work pre-opening hours as I do today, and up shelving in Genre the sheer peacefulness goes some way to confirming my suspicions. My suspicions are, one, that pre-opening hours are super nice, morning people have it easy, and we night people should feel free to dump stuff onto the morning people because they have it so good in the library without patrons (yes, that's all just one suspicion!), and, two, the library, any library, is at its absolute best when you are all alone in it.

For the first I am aware that it is an illusion. As a human I find myself at times prey to erratic fits of thinking that what others nearby have is better than what I have. This kind of belief is actually so common I think it should have its own aphorism! It should involve lawns and be color coded for easy reference. If I were a famous, socially networked blogger I bet there'd already be a phrase like that, but no, not for me. Famous, socially networked bloggers have it so much better!

Oh, sorry, I digressed again, didn't I? I am afraid one day we will all wake up and find this whole blog was just one big digression. Oops, I think we better hurry on to the next paragraph.

Anyway, ahem, the fact is that pre-opening and the night closing have a kind of mirror quality to each other, like lawns opposite a fence, or sunrise and sunset. But I do like the quality in both much more than all the middle of the day stuff. It's all more peaceful and self-contained even if it can be busy. There's a kind of attention to it, self-directed instead of responsive, a sense of things being put in order rather than just maintained. Although perhaps in reality all the opening/closing stuff is appealing to me mostly because of its minority status. Most of my day is in the hurley burley, so the quiet touches stand out nicely.

As to the best library being the one you're alone in, well, I think it's simply true (or maybe if not alone, just with one person of great sympathy). They even made a Twilight Zone about it, that guy who just wanted to be left alone to read and then one day wakes up and everyone in the world is vanished. There is no trace of anyone or how they disappeared. But all the things of the world, and all the books are still there. He is very happy until he breaks his glasses. Those Twilight Zones could be pretty sad. Maybe he could stumble through to the large type section. It reminds me of the oldest of library jokes (and old jokes are rarely funny): 

This place would be perfect if it weren't for all the patrons.

Keeping you informed

A storm hit my city. My wife and I watched it from our wee, snug city cottage. The winds were fierce and it was fun and dramatic to see, but it seemed like just another bang-up storm like we midwesterners get sometimes. It wasn't. In 15 minutes the streets of our neighborhood started to fill with neighbors. Who knew there were so many people living in all these houses? They just poured out of them! Ick! But I guess they're all okay, really. Some of them are quite nice actually. Anyway, we went out too. The world was full of  "Wow!"s. Great trees, giant trees, old trees, huge chunks of trees had fallen to their deaths. Roads were blocked everywhere. Garages, cars, walls, parts of houses, were crushed. The views down all our long straight avenues were blocked and disordered with sudden new green and strange walls of trunk.

The prompt removal of a snapped in half, alley-blocking pine tree by an across the alley neighbor allowed me to go to work the next day, and, singing Bruce Springsteen's My City In Ruins while driving a complicated maze of a constantly blocked, alternate routes, I was keen to hear what all the media venues had to say about our devastation.

Not much, it turns out. Locally it was a story, but nothing that altered regular programming. I heard not a word about it on my drive as it fell between official news times. Nationally, well, if you don't live in these cities you probably didn't hear much of anything about this. But here, I believe, is what should have been the national headlines to announce this story:

Thousands of Huge Trees Slaughtered in Epic Storm!

Renowned Local Blogger Loses Internet!

The subtitle of that headline brings me to the mundane, informational and alleged point of this blog post. I have no internet. And whether it comes back in a day or two or a week or more is not entirely clear yet. I am currently having to post on the fly here, at work, on lunch. This makes it hard to polish things up all shiny, the way you deserve, and blog post publication could get a bit choppier than usual in the next week. If all this does happen, I think things will even out soon enough if we hang in there. We'll all get through this together!

Those trees, though, are dead forever.

Out past where the Dewey Decimal System Ends and a prize!

In the retrofitted book I told you about the retrofitted books I am working on to send out to the little free libraries of my city to do whatever mysterious or mundane things they might want to do. These books are sort of book versions of my blog here. I said also that I would soon post some pictures of some of what I have so far, and so that is what I am doing today! There's also a prize so scroll to the end even if you despise pictures and don't think they are worth very many words at all, but like prizes.


These are a variety of shots of covers, backs, etc.

I am offering one of these here books (from this series) as my second official blog prize!

The clue is:

Thursday's (real) daughter.

To win you need only be the first person to enter the correct one word answer in the comments of the next post I put up that has the name "Jasper" in it. This will happen in the next week some time.

Good luck if you want it.

Book titles I'd like to see.

Okay, yes, this is a little Mad Magazine, but people who blog every day can't get all picky about their antecedents, and what's wrong with Mad Magazine anyway? They were never quite as good as my secret youngster heart wanted them to be, but they were okay. They were okay. What a glamorous set-up for a short list. You are going to love this!

So, um, book titles I'd really like to see:

I Went to Heaven and All I Got Was This Lucrative Book Deal.

The Last Garfield Book Ever

Lick me. I'm a Book! (A junior tasters library selection)

Catcher In the Rye II, The Complete Discovered Manuscript

Who are you this time?

Yesterday a newly hired clerk/page for the substitute pool was being quietly trained in on the computers. I met her only in passing and whether she one day gets real, regular hours at my library or I barely ever see her again remains to be seen. But unbidden, when I saw her, I thought "Who are you this time?"

People, amazingly, all manage to be discrete individuals. You'd think after a hundred or so of them they'd just start repeating themselves. "Oh, that one." You'd say. "You mean I have to use a new name for them?" But even though that is not true and people unfold in infinite variety, everything unfolds in infinite variety, there is some weird place where it is true. There is, for instance, some quality of role fulfillment in a work place, over many years, to the people who have been there long enough, where even if a new person isn't some bizarre clone of some previous employee, they do echo them. There is some slot, some battle suit, some role that they step into. The commonality might be made up of a hodgepodge of often superficial similarities and the more that role, in the work community, hungers for a fresh representative, the fewer commonalities are required for a new employee to become the new "Mike" or "Betty" or "Vicki".  Do we need a new butterfly, a workhorse, a socially isolated manager's friend? Do we need a rabble rouser, a gung-ho type, a miss sleepy, a grumbler, a rule-hound? How about someone who gets into everything, or a screw-up, or an affable up to no good? You could be that person. It just takes anywhere from seven to fifteen shared traits and an open slot. Do you know how many traits you have? Thousands! Hundreds of thousands if we're willing to go into detail, and just nine medium small ones can make you the new Belinda. Maybe you care for your parents, work Belinda's old hours, have the same hairdo, have a similar sense of humor, are in your 50s, have an accent, can't work fast, are friendly, dress up, are always on the phone. Social cultures are like living organisms. They will eat you and try and assign you a role. If all goes well you'll be mostly happy with the one you get. Over the years you can put your own polish on it, reinvent it a little, even redefine a section or two, make it your own. And after five or 40 years, when you leave, there will be a giant venus flytrap in the place where you once stood, eager to devour any new hire that can vaguely fit all the social culture needs you left behind.

If I were king of the library, the 6th decree.

As King I have been revolutionary (everybody shelves), community oriented (the local library)  a defender of literature (the staff library),  a purveyor of the unusual (well, everything, but also The Useful, Strange, and Interesting Things Library), and an inspirer of the workplace (Pet projects). So if my next kingly addition or decree seems a little, um, frosting like, remember that there is plenty of good solid cake underneath (I'm not sure that analogy went the way I wanted it to, but... cake... frosting...hmm, if it can be an exceptional carrot cake, why not?). Whose frosting? Well, me and my co-workers frosting, but not frosting really, it's actually really fresh fish, because as King I am installing a sushi bar in the break room. Yes, a sushi bar.

Irresponsible you say (well, not you, more like them. You are fine. They bring up that sort of thing, and they do it like, all the time!). No no no I say to the "irresponsible" dig. Many nice tech companies have this sort of thing. The Pixar staff Cafe is supposed to be quite good and the Google Cafeteria is open pretty much all the time and is free, just for a start. Both of them are alleged to have fresh and healthful food. The twisted cultural rhetoric is that Government institutions should take inspiration from the private sector, but interestingly the inspiration they are supposed to take is usually a selection of the oxygen starving, autocratic, soulless elements of large and evil corporations. Well what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If we have to look at companies for inspiration why not look at the super nice things, if we can find them. I have found them. And I am putting in a Sushi bar!

But I am not unreasonable nor am I an imprudent spendthrift. We do hire a Sushi Chef, and maybe an apprentice sushi chef. If we have to lose a librarian and a clerk, so be it. I see a lean and engaged and intensely working staff who eats high quality Japanese food. We'll work all that out. The library sets up a good sushi bar/small kitchen area in the break room. It's on the hook for equipment, a start-up fund, and an ongoing stipend for some of the lower end basics. The fish/seaweed/other food costs are met on a pay, at cost, for what you eat basis. I am open to the idea of donations as an addition to cost coverage, and also to chef tipping. Here's some of what I'll aim for.

1. Six day coverage, some prepared food for off hours and the seventh day.
2. Yes, volunteers can eat there, as well as accompanied friends, family, guests and also off-duty staff, but eating there falls under the everybody shelves rule (see the first proclamation) so you will have to do a tithe of shelving.
3. No, it's not only sushi, but it will be healthful, moderately simple, and Japanese, and chef driven.
4. No, no cake. That was an analogy, and, interestingly, the ubiquitous celebration sheet cake so common to break rooms is the very antithesis of this endeavor.

If, like me, some little (or big) part of you thinks this is too absurd a dream for a large suburban library I think it is a reflection of how small our dreams have become in this country. We are having a sushi bar in the library!

So it is decreed, this day, etc. etc., the King.